Lethal Witness: Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Honorary Pathologist
Before there was CSI, there was one man who saw beyond the crime and into the future of forensic science, Bernard Spilsbury, who brought criminal investigation into the modern age.\ Sir Bernard Spilsbury was an early-twentieth-century British forensic pathologist who gained fame by testifying in classic murder cases, beginning in 1910 with the Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen trial. His expert court testimony-he identified Crippen's victim by detailed microscopic study of a scar-convinced the lay...
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Before there was CSI, there was one man who saw beyond the crime and into the future of forensic science, Bernard Spilsbury, who brought criminal investigation into the modern age.Sir Bernard Spilsbury was an early-twentieth-century British forensic pathologist who gained fame by testifying in classic murder cases, beginning in 1910 with the Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen trial. His expert court testimony-he identified Crippen's victim by detailed microscopic study of a scar-convinced the lay jury of Crippen's guilt.Considered the father of modern forensic pathology, Spilsbury became well known after he provided crucial prosecutorial evidence in the Brides in the Bath case (where a nurse nearly drowned in a laboratory experiment designed to prove his theories), the Blazing Car and Brighton Trunk murders, and the Hay-on-Wye aresenic poisoning trial. Knighted in 1923, Spilsbury performed 20,000 postmortem examinations and became the first and only "Honorary Pathologist to the Home Office."Controversial and dramatic, Lethal Witness charts Spilsbury's rise and fall as a media star, revealing how he put spin on the facts, embellished evidence, and played games with the truth. In some notorious cases, his "positive evidence" led to the conviction and execution of men innocent of murder-gross miscarriages of justice that now demand official pardons.Andrew Rose examines Spilsbury's carefully nurtured image, dogmatic manner, and unbending belief in his own infallibility and exposes the fallacies of the man dubbed "the most brilliant scientific detective of all time." True crime fans, students of forensics, and law enforcement professionals will enjoy this biography of Sir BernardSpilsbury, the man who helped raise forensic science to an art.
Acknowledgments ixIntroduction xv1 An Unsentimental Education 12 Dr Spilsbury 93 Dr Crippen 214 Moral High Ground 315 Brides in the Bath 416 Night of the Gothas 517 The Button and Badge Murder 638 Mid-Life Crisis 779 'Excuse Fingers' 8510 'Arise, Sir Bernard' 9711 1924: Two Vintage Murders 11112 A Martyr to Spilsburyism 12513 Not Proven 14114 'Do you think I've come up here for fun?' 15315 A Disappearing Bruise 16316 The Blazing Car Murder 18517 Murder Parade 19918 Ghastly Speculation 21119 'Laugh, baby, laugh for the last time!' 22120 Tony Mancini: The Brighton Trunk Murders 22921 Spilsbury in Decline 24122 Wartime 25123 Last Years 263Notes 271Select Bibliography 285Index 289Errata 297
